Survivor Fiji: 5/13 (Finale and Reunion) SPOILERS

I think that video answers my questions.

I love i-net.

Dreamz, you lying mutherf*****! I honestly believed that he’d keep his word; but in hind-sight I can’t believe I was that stupid. It makes me wonder what that says about me…

Earl was a good choice for second place, but Yau-Man-- I’m male, I’m straight, I want to have his babies.

Well, I thought she looked over to say, “See he’s not as dumb as a box of rocks, but he did have to count in his head first.”

I think her point there was that she didn’t think Dreamz would know the answer, and was trying to him look stupid. Which is really one of the meanest things I’ve ever seen on Survivor. What a complete bitch.

In Dreamz’s defense, sometimes this strategy actually works. (See: Sandra in Pearl Islands.) The “I’ll-vote-for-anybody-but-me” plan is a perfectly valid one. And while I’ll admit that it stinks that Yau-Man got screwed in the deal, because Dreamz didn’t keep his word, the correct person actually won the $1m. Earl earned it (and I don’t usually say that about whoever wins). Earl made a lot of the deals and did a lot of the legwork to keep Yau-Man in the game for that long; almost anybody else would have cut him loose long ago. If not for Dreamz being Dreamz, Earl and Yau-Man would have both been in the Final Three, and Yau-Man would have won. That would have been cool, in its way, but it also would have been a shame, because Earl actually played the best game this time. He pulled strings without anybody realizing it. He secured Cassandra and Dreamz into the Core Four. I think Yau-Man deserves a lot of credit for being awesome and cute and funny and pretty much being himself, but Yau-Man was actually kind of alone in this. Earl always had allies. His game was a combination of many of the best strategies, all rolled into one, without a lot of the ego that we sometimes see from people who know what they’re doing when they play the game. While I wouldn’t have been unhappy with Yau-Man winning, because I love the dude, I think Earl certainly earned his win.

I’m glad Earl won considering the options, but why is he getting a free pass for voting Yau Man out? Dreamz gave his word that he’d hand over the immunity necklace, and didn’t. Hadn’t Earl told Yau Man they’d be in the final together? Wasn’t his vote just as much a betrayal as Dreamz’s flip?

And the Lisi video… TEH HORRAR. I’m going to see if the Hatian guy from Heroes is available to pluck the memory of that video out of my brain.

Not exactly. I think it was a given that Yau Man had to go after Dreamz pulled that scumbag move. Earl would have been second choice to go, as both Cassandra and Dreamz didn’t have a chance in hell of beating him, as we now know.

So, if for some reason Cassandra and Dreamz decided to vote for Earl or if even one of them voted for Earl, he would have been gone if he hadn’t counted on at least one of them voting for Yau Man. At that point, it was his only smart move. If he didn’t vote Yau and lost, he would have been the next Colby–as in the Survivor that made the dumbest move in the game.

With all due modesty, I wasn’t the least surprised. Once the Yau-Man deal went down, I thought it might be 8-1-0, or 7-1-1 at worst. There was no alternative: Dreamz had royally pissed off at least 5 of the 9 on the jury; and Cassandra was an absolute non-entity non-player had-no-right-to-be-there cipher; dragged along to be the strawman that would get no votes (a role she fulfilled admirably).

My only regret is that Probst didn’t call on Alex to explain his hysterical rant at TC, and to ask Lisi how many zeros *she * thinks there are in a million.

I was surprised that Dreamz didn’t take a more rational explanation for changing his mind, such as:

Dumbass… a fun season though.

When they voted out Boo at 5 left, no-one knew Earl had the other Immunity Idol, so why didn’t Dreamz, Boo, and Cassandra take out Earl? Triple dumbasses…

I’m sure it’ll be in the southern (tropical) part. They don’t want the folks to have to bring parkas, do they?

I had Earl picked from early on, no pun intended. But man, did he gain some post-show weight or what? I hadn’t anticipated the vitriol that the 3 horsemen would hold for Dreamz, but I guess that makes a lot of sense. And Boo, you had to play the Christian card, didn’t you? Yau-man was maybe too clever by half, but I don’t know if it would’ve worked out any differently had he not made that deal. I suspect, though, that if they had voted out Dreamz instead of Boo, that Yau could’ve lasted longer on the rack than Boo and then he would’ve had immunity. Of course we’ll never know…

Correction: it was Dreamz who had played the Christian card very early on in the game. Boo was just tossing it back to him.

When Yau and Dreamz were the only two left in the final immunity challenge, Yau should have turned to Dreamz and asked him to let go so Yau could win, thus fulfilling the deal. It might have caught Dreamz off-guard enough that he wouldn’t have time to talk himself out of it.

Then again, Dreamz might have just said “No, I’ll win it and then give it to you.” So there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have worked, but at least it would have given Yau something to think about (whether he could trust Dreamz to keep his word).

No, not IMHO. And the reason is a two-word answer: Colby Donaldson.

Remember, if Colby had taken Keith Famie instead of Tina Wesson, he would have won the million. Instead, he chose to do the “honorable” thing and lost $900,000. The scout leader in Pearl Islands did the same thing by voting off Jonny Fairplay. When Dreamz reneged on his deal with Yau, Earl had no choice. The object of the game is to win, and Earl played by far the best game.

And, while what Dreamz did was kinda scummy, I have to wonder: if Yau had made the deal with anyone else, would it have turned out differently? I think not. It was dumb of him to even make the deal in the first place, especially knowing how Dreamz had played the game up to that point. And remember, Yau was ready to take Dreamz out of the game in the blink of an eye if he had given up immunity, so there wasn’t much “honor” there either.

I sincerely hope this is the last time we will see three finalists. It’s added nothing to the game, IMHO, and MB should go back to the “final two” for all future shows.

I’ll tell you what, for a season that started out extremely meh, it certainly had one of the best endings. Truly enjoyable!

China sounds like a fascinating locale, and I’m so looking forward to September. See you all then!

P.S. Anyone gonna watch Pirate Master ? Looks like lotsa fun!

Wow, you’re absolutely right.

Why all the hate for Dreamz? What did he do, he made a promise and broke it.

This happens multiple times an episode, what Dreamz did is no different than if someone would have told somebody else that they weren’t going to vote for them at tribal council and they do.

Why don’t people realize you check your morality at the door when you play this game. Lying is part of the game, it’s very rare you can win this game without lying (I think Earl is the closest to do this).

If you were as hard-up as Dreamz, and you had a shot of finishing 4th and winning a bit of money, or telling a lie and winning $100,000 (I’m pretty sure he knew there was no way he was going to win it all) I’m sure you would lie.

Now on another note, that was the weirdest final tribal council I remember seeing. Did anybody ask any questions that were remotely intelligent? Did somebody feed them all some delusional magic mushrooms?

And I swear Lisi is either bi-polar or schitzo (and she obviously refuses to take her meds). What the hell was up with her questions? Or her answer when Jeff asked her a question?

All in all I enjoyed this season, it had some of the best tribal councils ever. Can’t wait for Survivor China!

Cheers!

MtM

Yep, and he said so when Yau asked him.

While I agree with you about Dreamz (hey, this is poker, folks, you’re supposed to lie), I don’t see any honor issues with Yau. He didn’t tell Dreamz that he wouldn’t vote him out, so what’s the big deal?

I agree that Dreamz backstabbing of Yau-man was not much different than his back-stabbing of the four Horsemen, or any other previous contestants’ previous backstabbing. The only differences were in visibility, and import: it was such a clear, open, public promise, and so late in the game.

When you stab someone in the back, your only hope is to not need that person’s votes when it comes to the final TC – or at least, to make a persuasive case that your outwitting the poor sap should get some respect. Dreamz was screwed whether he kept the idol or not: he had no votes on the jury, and was unable to sway any of them through the brilliance of his rhetoric.

Somebody (I think it was rockle) said they were hoping for one of those final TC’s where you get “my question is, YOU SUCK!”. We pretty much got that. Lisi’s psychotic. Alex asked Cassandra a question (of the “You suck” variety), then interrupted Cassandra’s answer to tell her to shut up cuz it was his turn to talk. OK, dude… :rolleyes:

This is exactly it. I, at least, don’t think the deal Dreamz made with Yau is any different than any deal made on this show, or that Dreamz is a horrible person for breaking the deal. What he is, though, is a horrible player. Dreamz made a game decision to go back on his word, and he suffered a game consequence as a result - no one voted for him.

Part of the game is figuring out how to earn votes from people once you make the final Council. For some reason, when analyzing a player’s performance, we tend to weight the act of *getting to * the final Council much more heavily than the ability to actually get votes. This is why (some) people thought of Terry the Fighter Pilot as a good player, even though he was actually a bad player - his physical strength got him there, but he had no game skills to earn the votes he needed to win. And the thing is, the way the game is structured, players can base their vote on anything they want. If JoeBob won’t vote for Jethro because Jethro went back on an agreement, this isn’t unfair to Jethro or an “incorrect” vote by JoeBob - it’s part of the game for Jethro to figure out what kind of person JoeBob is and what it will take to win his vote, and if he fails to do that for whatever reason, that’s part of the game, too.

If Dreamz didn’t realize that one way to alienate votes would be to take a freaking car from a widely beloved, seemingly-frail old man and then go back on his word, then he is a terrible player. What Dreamz should have done is refused the deal in the first place. “Sorry, Yau, a car would be great, but I can buy a car when I win a million dollars.” If he had done that, I guarantee the endgame would have played out somewhat differently.

Yeah, as soon as Earl dropped off and Dreamz didn’t, I knew (90%) that he was going to renege on the deal. In retrospect, it really was a fatal strategic error by Yao Man. It somewhat protected Dreamz over Boo (to keep him around as a potential ally), and then absolutely put Dreamz in a no-win stuation the next time around. If he wanted to stay in the game, he had to back out of his deal. It would have been a better outcome for Yao Man if he never made the offer at all. Plus, he’d have a $60,000 truck.